Today's previews and screenshots have now started to surface. You can see all the new shots by scrolling to the bottom of this post, and below that are links to all the articles our summary of new information is sourced from (mainly CVG).

Summary of new information in today's previews

Features / Gameplay

Car modding makes a return! Pay 'n' Spray's now double up as mod shops and offer the ability to swap out license plates, as well as provide performance upgrades and cosmetic options such as new spoilers, grilles, and window tints. Suspension and brake upgrades can also be carried out.

Weapons can be customised with laser sights, scopes, silencers, and high capacity magazines.

Property purchasing makes a return from Vice City - houses, garages and businesses can all be purchased as additional sources of revenue. Different characters will purchase different types of business.

Player customisation includes haircuts, tattoos and of course clothes

The in-game phone, iFruit, can be used to take pictures and upload them to Social Club or your own social media page.

The iFruit is a smartphone and even has its own apps: internet, contacts, social media, calendar, and a replay missions app. There are three more Rockstar hasn't yet detailed.

Activities you can do include stunt jumps, flying challenges, yoga, golf, tennis and bike races. You can also pick up hitch-hikers.

Side-missions also make a return. One example is where Michael must escort a starlet away from the paparazzi and back to her home in the hills.

It is possible to rob ATMs and liquor stores, presumably in a way similar to Vice City.

You can hunt the wildlife if you want to

Combat

You can combat roll in and out of cover. There is also a "combat jog".

You have a better view of oncoming targets thanks to a wider, Gears of War-styled field of vision

You can run and gun fluidly while retaining control of the aiming reticule

The reticule changes from white to red when targeted at an enemy, and flashes an X when the enemy is dead

Map / Environment

Rockstar say the land mass in GTAV is three and a half times the size of Red Dead Redemption, with the total play area becoming five times as big once you factor in the ocean

Wildlife spotted included deer and mountain lions

Fully explorable ocean includes "circling sharks, deep underwater ridges, schools of fish, a barnacle-encrusted wreck and shafts of sunlight shimmering through the water"

You can even dive for treasure (NPCs will do this too) but there are no waypoints, you'll have to explore yourself

The ocean has amazing wave physics, especially noticeable when boats speed past you

Some boats will include gear such as wetsuit, flippers and tanks for diving

The population of GTAV will be 5 times that of GTA IV

The geographic span of the map is massive. It contains mountains, rivers, lakes, military bases, farmland, desert, dense urban environments and more.

The game has a "crazy level of detail": You can board buses for a tour of celebrity homes, there are humourous film posters are on walls, men in costumes will accost you outside the Cathay Theatre, one character was Impotent Rage (like a "crappy version of Superman") and Space Ranger.

Characters and Skills

Each character has a unique set of attributes: Stamina, Shooting, Strength, Stealth, Flying, Driving, Mechanic, Lung Capacity

In addition to the above, each character has a "Special". Special meters drain after use, and recharge slowly in the aftermath

The stealth skill suggests that you can use a stealth based approach to heists to draw minimal attention and perhaps walk away with a larger reward

The character selection wheel is split into four triangles: Franklin, Trevor, Michael, and your own multiplayer avtaar

Each character moves in a slightly different way, reflecting their different builds and styles

Google Earth style transitions between characters are very stylish. The screen fills with static and the camera suddenly moves from your character, to above him, to very high above him, and then in reverse to the character you are transitioning to. It is quicker if the player you are switching to is nearer.

Character switching can be done during cutscenes, manually, or automatically when AI takes control for you.

Although you can choose to switch when you want, in-game dialogue will suggest moments when it would be a good time to switch.

The relationship between single and multiplayer is much closer. You can quickly drop in and out of multipayer simply by pressing Down on the D-pad - Rockstar said more will be revealed on multiplayer in the future

Trevor has an ongoing feud with The Lost.

Mission Details

Michael has an obsession with classic films and comes up with heists based on them, which are in turn based on real world movies.

The demo showed a mission entitled 'Blitz Play' - Michael organises a heist similar to the one he's seen in the GTA version of real life film Heat.

Mini heists are used as preparation. Players must secure vehicles, outfits, masks, getaway vehicles, and even a crew. Locations will also be needed for dumping evidence.

These smaller heists build up to a bigger heist. They'll require the right crew and players will have to decide between cheaping out and getting less skilled people, or paying more for highly skilled crew members that could result in a larger cut in the end.

Crew members, who include gunmen, wheelmen, technician etc. who survive the heist will continue through to the next one and receive a skill boost

Each of the three characters has their own job to do, it's up to you how much you want to do with each one.

If you die the game reloads to the last checkpoint, even if the other two characters are still alive

In the big ones, there can be no mistakes: you need the right weapons and gear; you need to choose the right approach, whether it's brute force, or stealth, and plan out your tactics via a pre-mission corkboard; and you need to have hired the right crew for the right job - that's crew in addition to Michael, Franklin and Trevor. Choose to pay less and you get less qualified personnel; pay more, and you get more reliable drivers, gunmen and technicians - but they take a bigger cut. It's a balance, and it's through missions like 'Blitz Play' that you find your best approach.

If you have an hour to kill, we recommend checking out CVG's preview on YouTube, it's basically more or less the same information that we've summarised here, but in greater detail. Press play and leave it running in the background.

New Screenshots

New Artwork

The following publications have written previews of what they saw in the demo Rockstar showed them in the last few days:

Cheers. Speed reading stuff ... bound to have a couple of minor mistakes.

IGN's article was terrible anyway, their standards are seriously slipping. They barely revealed anything about the game, compared to say CVG who posted tonnes of details, in fact it's where most of our summary is taken from.

I agree, but I am just going to have to trust Rockstar on this one, they have never let me down. Still no previews mention much about the driving, other than it is similar to Midnight Club; LA in that we can tweak the cars on par with MCLA, that is very cool.

Cheers. Speed reading stuff ... bound to have a couple of minor mistakes.

IGN's article was terrible anyway, their standards are seriously slipping. They barely revealed anything about the game, compared to say CVG who posted tonnes of details, in fact it's where most of our summary is taken from.

IGN have standards? That's new.

Anyway, I admit I see a lot of stuff here I ether missed from GTA SA or always wanted in GTA. Wish Rockstar weren't such assholes...

When are you going to kill yourself? This is the first semi-positive thing you've ever said on this forum about R*/GTA. Then you end it immediately. What is actually your problem? You're getting banned after your response btw so make it accurate.

The constant character switching ensures the action doesn’t let up until the shooting stops, while regenerating health, another series first, encourages ballsy play.

- Edge

When you're on the receiving end of a hail of bullets, you'll also notice a slightly modified health system. You can regenerate up to 50 percent of your health, but you need med packs to make up the difference.

- GameInformer

Not a fan of regenerating health, isn't having checkpoints enough.

Rockstar have it regenerate up to 25% at least, similar to Max Payne when you would go from near death to a limp, but still have a fighting chance. Half is too much, what do you guys think?

Actually I think regenerative health is ok if done well, I think MP3 did it well and from the sounds of this I think GTAV will too, so I think 50% is fine. I am sure they will have done a lot of testing between 10% and 100% to see what worked best and settled on 50.

When are you going to kill yourself? This is the first semi-positive thing you've ever said on this forum about R*/GTA. Then you end it immediately. What is actually your problem? You're getting banned after your response btw so make it accurate.

I think i love you now! Please ban him. all he ever does is post unfounded complaints about the game and company that this forum is all about, and the complaints are never contributive whatsoever. Nothing irritates me more than what he has to say about every news update

Car modding makes a return! Pay 'n' Spray's now double up as mod shops and offer the ability to swap out license plates, as well as provide performance upgrades and cosmetic options such as new spoilers, grilles, and window tints. Suspension and brake upgrades can also be carried out.

Sounds a lot like Saints Row's car customization, which I've had hours upon hours of fun with. And hopefully suspension upgrades include lift kits.

When are you going to kill yourself? This is the first semi-positive thing you've ever said on this forum about R*/GTA. Then you end it immediately. What is actually your problem? You're getting banned after your response btw so make it accurate.

That's not true! I said a lot of nice things about Rockstar. Like the fact that they are the best at fooling the suckers and taking their money, or that they can brainwash even the most rational person and turn them into a fanboy / girl like noone else can!

Anyway you seem to be forgetting that they delivered three shitty PC ports one after the other in the last few years, and not because they made mistakes like every other human being, but because they didn't give a shit, if they had, they'd have ported the games (or better yet, developed them alongside the console versions AS IT SHOULD BE) themselves instead of handing them over to some cheap Canadian studio with no experience whatsoever.

The pattern is the same with GTA V, they delay the PC version and release the console versions first cause a lot of console players will buy PC version afterwards, in addition to the console version they already own (two-for-one sale, fact) whereas vice-versa, nein. Then when the console version sales start dropping they begin work on a low-budget, poorly optimized PC port which sells anyway cause people are f*cking stupid and take Rockstar's word for it instead of trying the game first.

Wow, IGN's articles were just terrible. They didn't reveal much but point out the games faults.

Anyways, I don't mind the regenerating health up to 50%, I can see why they decided to do this. Since there are now 3 characters you'll probably want to have full health, Lets say your using Trevor and he gets low on Health, You'll probably start looking around trying to find one health pack in a gun fight to heal him. Now lets say you switch to franklin and you notice he's about to die but there are no more health packs in the area. You'll more than likely won't bother using him since one mess up and you'll be dead.

A literal Smorgasboard of new info for the weekend, so much coming out I hadn't been able to do a proper writeup on GTAChronicles about it all, but nice going with this, Chris! I've been more busy offline resigned to the long waiting leading up to GTA V on release day, when the band The Eagles are also set to perform that evening, the same day GTA V comes out here in my town, I can't believe the good fortune! Now, it would certainly be serendipitous if Hotel California featured in the GTA soundtrack, wouldn't it?!? haha Really nice update and it feels oh, so much closer to release now!!

A literal Smorgasboard of new info for the weekend, so much coming out I hadn't been able to do a proper writeup on GTAChronicles about it all, but nice going with this, Chris! I've been more busy offline resigned to the long waiting leading up to GTA V on release day, when the band The Eagles are also set to perform that evening, the same day GTA V comes out here in my town, I can't believe the good fortune! Now, it would certainly be serendipitous if Hotel California featured in the GTA soundtrack, wouldn't it?!? haha Really nice update and it feels oh, so much closer to release now!!